In Indonesia, there lived a thousand of tribes. But let me tell one of the most unique ceremony that I think is the most surprising yet interesting. It’s called the Walking Dead ceremony or in local language, it’s called “Mayat Berjalan”. From the name, you can tell that it is probably a hoax for most of the people because the dead can’t bring back alive. You’re wrong !

It’s a ceremony that used to raise the dead for whom they will walk from their grave to their former house.The Walking Dead is a unique ceremony yet terifying. It involve the corpse and the body relatives to accompany the walking corpse to their former house. Legend says that long time ago in Toraja, there aren’t any kind of transportation that can move the corpse easily. The terrain of toraja that consist of high terrain makes it difficult for carrying the corpse. So, they invent the Walking Dead ceremony. People of toraja known for their respect to the dead.

After the corpse reach their destination, the corpse then enter the house and became dead again. Their relatives then started to clean the body of the corpse and then they will buried the corpse with the new clothes that the corpse hase been given.

In Nowadays, it’s rare to see this unique ceremony again. Not all of the people toraja can execute this ceremony again. Only a few of them that is trusted from their elder can heir this knowledge.

I have never seen any actual footage of this ritual, though there are some pictures circulating the internet capturing people holding a video camera, I doubt that the bodies actually walk by themselves.
In a neighboring country, there is also a cult that practices some form of black magic that makes inanimate objects seem to dance in tune with sticks that the caster beats on the floor. But those are very small items not a full human sized corpse.

I’m not so sure about the corpse walking claim, but in a remote island called Siquijor in the neighboring country, the Philippines, there are people who still believe and use black magic and every so often famous local journalists would do investigative reports in these sort of things and one of them is the dancing paper dolls. Some claim it be a fake, but I have watched dozens of investigative reports that prove otherwise. A quick youtube search will yield results, this one from a more recent documentary, here’s the link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4viKeAQ2KY&feature=relmfu), it was briefly mentioned in 4:11 of the documentary since the practitioner has long stopped practicing the art. Another clip taken from a French documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7f3w5giNs&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL3A26537C104A8670).